Microsoft and G42’s planned $1 billion geothermal-powered AI data center in Kenya has stalled in May 2026 after the Kenyan government declined to guarantee the electricity capacity and payments needed to support the project at full scale. The blockage is not a local procurement hiccup; it is a preview of the next phase of the AI buildout, where cloud regions are negotiated as much with grid operators and finance ministries as with developers. Kenya was supposed to be the elegant version of...
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Pwn2Own Berlin 2026, held this week at OffensiveCon in Berlin, saw researchers compromise fully patched Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Edge, Windows 11, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Nvidia tooling, and multiple AI platforms, with Zero Day Initiative confirming $908,750 paid for 39 unique zero-days before final Day 3 totals. The headline is not that Windows was “hacked,” because Pwn2Own exists to make that happen under controlled rules. The headline is that Microsoft’s desktop, browser, and...
Windows 11 can automatically change brightness and contrast on some PCs using Content Adaptive Brightness Control, a power-saving display feature that reacts to what is shown on the built-in screen rather than only to room lighting. The setting lives under Settings, System, Display, and Brightness, where users can turn “Change brightness based on content” off. That small toggle has become another example of a larger Windows problem: Microsoft keeps importing mobile assumptions into a...
Microsoft confirmed on May 15, 2026, that Windows 11’s May security update KB5089549 can fail during installation on versions 24H2 and 25H2 when the EFI System Partition has too little free space, and it is mitigating the problem through Known Issue Rollback. That dry summary hides a more interesting Windows story: the update mechanism is now good enough to repair some mistakes from the cloud, but still brittle enough to be derailed by a hidden boot partition most users never knew existed...
Microsoft said on May 13, 2026, that .NET MAUI apps targeting Android, iOS, and Mac Catalyst will run on CoreCLR by default starting with .NET 11 Preview 4, replacing Mono as the default mobile runtime after more than two decades of Xamarin-era lineage. The change is not just a runtime swap; it is Microsoft’s clearest signal yet that the modern .NET platform is finally becoming one platform in practice, not merely in branding. For MAUI developers, the promise is better performance, more...
Microsoft and Palantir entered 2026’s AI earnings cycle with blowout numbers, but Microsoft is selling the cloud infrastructure, models, platforms, and productivity software enterprises rent at scale, while Palantir is selling the operational AI layer that turns institutional data into decisions for governments and large companies. The distinction matters because investors are not simply choosing between two AI stocks; they are choosing between two theories of where value accrues...
Microsoft released Windows 11 Build 26300.8493 to the Experimental channel on May 15, 2026, restoring official taskbar placement options, adding a smaller taskbar mode, expanding Fluid Dictation to Spanish and French, and polishing several Windows shell behaviors. The build is not a general-availability release, and Microsoft has not promised when these features will reach mainstream Windows 11 users. But the direction is hard to miss: after years of defending Windows 11’s simplified shell...
Microsoft is rolling out an Excel change in Microsoft 365 that moves Copilot into a persistent floating button at the bottom-right of worksheets, and users are complaining in Microsoft feedback channels that the control cannot be fully removed. The fight is not really about one icon. It is about Microsoft’s growing habit of treating paid productivity software as a distribution surface for AI. Excel users are reacting sharply because the spreadsheet grid is not decorative chrome; it is the...
Microsoft is testing a redesigned Xbox achievement experience for the Xbox PC app and Game Bar in the PC Gaming Preview, bringing console-style animations, custom color matching, rare-achievement flair, and 100-percent completion highlights to Windows players as of mid-May 2026. That sounds cosmetic until you understand the platform Microsoft is trying to build. Xbox on PC has long carried the right account system, library hooks, Game Pass integration, and social graph, but too often it has...
Microsoft confirmed on May 15, 2026, that Windows 11 Insiders will soon get deeper Start menu customization, including section-level toggles, separate controls for file recommendations, small and large Start layouts, and an option to hide account details while presenting or streaming. The announcement lands alongside the return of movable and smaller taskbar options, a pair of changes users have been demanding since Windows 11 shipped. Microsoft is not merely adding knobs; it is tacitly...
Microsoft began testing new Windows 11 personalization controls on May 15, 2026, giving Windows Insiders in the Experimental channel options to resize the Start menu, hide major Start sections, adjust file recommendations, obscure account identity in Start, and move the taskbar to any screen edge. The news sounds small because the controls themselves are small. But in Windows 11, small controls have become proxies for a larger argument about who gets to decide how the desktop behaves...
On May 15, 2026, NTT DATA said it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire WinWire, a Santa Clara-based Microsoft partner focused on Azure, data engineering, cloud-native development, and agentic AI, with the deal subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. The announcement is not just another services roll-up dressed in AI language. It is a bet that the next phase of enterprise AI will be won less by model announcements than by the firms that can wire those models...
Security researchers at Pwn2Own Berlin 2026 exploited Microsoft Edge, Windows 11, and later Microsoft Exchange at OffensiveCon in Berlin on May 14 and May 15, earning six-figure payouts while starting the contest’s 90-day vendor repair clock for accepted zero-day submissions. The headline is not that Windows “lost” a hacking contest; Pwn2Own is designed to make modern platforms lose under controlled conditions. The sharper point is that Microsoft’s client, browser, and server stack all...
Microsoft began rolling out Windows 11 Experimental Preview Build 26300.8493 on May 15, 2026, giving Windows Insiders an official way to move the taskbar to the top, left, right, or bottom of the screen. The change sounds almost comically small until you remember that Windows 11 launched in 2021 by removing exactly this kind of long-standing desktop flexibility. For nearly five years, users have treated the missing movable taskbar as shorthand for a broader complaint: Windows 11 looked...
Microsoft is rolling out a new Excel interface change in Microsoft 365 that places a floating Copilot button in the bottom-right corner of worksheets, and users are complaining in Microsoft’s feedback channels that the control cannot be fully hidden. The complaint is not really about one icon. It is about Microsoft’s growing habit of treating working space inside paid productivity software as a distribution surface for AI. Excel users are reacting sharply because the spreadsheet grid is not...
Microsoft began rolling out Windows 11 Experimental Preview Build 26300.8493 on May 15, 2026, giving Windows Insiders the ability to place the taskbar at the bottom, top, left, or right edge of the screen and to enable a genuinely smaller taskbar. That sounds like a small settings change until you remember what Windows 11 took away at launch. The taskbar was not merely redesigned in 2021; it was narrowed, centralized, and stripped of habits that millions of Windows users had built over...
Microsoft began testing a Windows 11 taskbar and Start menu overhaul on May 15, 2026, in the Windows Insider Experimental channel, adding options to move the taskbar to the top, left, or right of the screen and to use a smaller taskbar layout. That is the factual fix; the larger story is Microsoft retreating from one of Windows 11’s most stubborn design bets. After years of telling users, in effect, that the new shell knew better than they did, Windows is rediscovering an old truth: the...
Microsoft is preparing Cloud-Initiated Driver Recovery for Windows, a Windows Update mechanism that lets Microsoft remotely roll back faulty drivers after distribution, with validation running from May through August 2026 and broader automatic use expected from September. The pitch is simple: when Windows Update ships a bad driver, Windows should not wait for every affected user to become their own support technician. The more important story is that Microsoft is quietly admitting that...
Microsoft began rolling out Windows 11 Experimental build 26300.8493 on May 15, 2026, giving Windows Insiders the ability to place the taskbar on the top, left, right, or bottom edge of the screen and to enable a smaller taskbar button mode. The change is not just a nostalgic checkbox for Windows 10 holdouts. It is Microsoft admitting, belatedly but unmistakably, that Windows 11’s clean-sheet taskbar design took away too much agency from the people who use Windows most intensely. The real...
Microsoft’s Xbox organization appeared to shift its public styling from “Xbox” to “XBOX” in mid-May 2026, after new gaming chief Asha Sharma polled users on X and the brand’s main X account adopted the all-caps name and handle. The move is small enough to be dismissed as typography, but that is precisely why it matters. Microsoft is trying to make Xbox feel less like a sprawling corporate strategy deck and more like a legible consumer brand again. The risk is that a company still wrestling...